


in darkness

by meritmut



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Queen Lúthien, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 00:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has never been feared before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in darkness

They have all fallen, each and every one of them.

_Hear my voice._

Even Morgoth, whose hungry gaze had pierced the guise she wore as easily as the sun through morning mist in Doriath's glades, has fallen at her word, at the rise and soar of her voice through the shadows that hum and prowl about the cornices of the hall, everywhere the jewel-light cannot reach—at the out-stretching of her will, and hers alone, Bauglir himself is brought low.

She does not let it shake her, that this power sat within her all this time. Does not let herself imagine what she might have done with it, if only she'd known sooner.

Not—not yet, anyway. There will be time, when this place is behind her.

Reaching out with voice and hands, her song flies clear and high as the winter moon in that eternal night to twine the deepest and strongest of spells about the dark one. She has not the luxury of caution and so moves close, digs deep, runs seeking fingers of enchantment over the one she has marked as her prey as the song wraps itself about the enormity of him, flitting hither-and-thither through the air to touch every soul near until it circles back, sails into her open palms to settle like the teeth of a key in her mind with a coppery click.

Voice and hands align to one purpose and close, tighten, _tug_.

He fights her, oh, Eru, does he fight—smiling as pits his might against her own with such resistance as could rob the _breath_ from her in the boiling blood of his tainted veins and Lúthien _burns_ to feel the vastness of him pushing back against her outflung hands, the two of them locked in an embrace that is not an embrace, that is a fight to the nearest edge of death and—she's _drowning_ in it, she is suffocating under mountains and oceans and the corruption of aeons on her flesh (no, something in her screams, no, _wrong_ , she is of the blood of the undying, she is not for the maggots and the dust, they will not have her), she will never see the stars again, never dance beneath the midsummer moon or feel the earth grow full and sweet with life at her command, she will surely perish here for her pride and all will be lost— _Mother, forgive me, I never meant—_

Huan howls and she can breathe again, the weight slackening from her bones long enough to gather her power once more and turn it loose against her enemy. The fires climb ever higher but Melian's daughter was born in the ascendancy of the Sickle, she has the spark of stars in her veins and the strength of her magic only rises in the face of the inferno.

Higher, higher still, to fall in darkling waves upon Morgoth's brow.

An almighty push, her mind slides against his and just like that—the tide turns.

With a roar like the felling of thousand ancient forests, like the death throes of the Nameless Things Eru never meant to live, Melkor tumbles from the throne and crashes to the ground, and Tinúviel stands tall above the mightiest and most terrible creature to ever sow discord in the world.

His crown falls too, the great beast of iron and captive light clattering to the flagstones in a clamour that sets her teeth and has her slender fingers curving into claws before her, hands still reaching out and yet to fall. And still the court sleeps, all the souls in that vaulted hall stand ensnared so neatly in the bonds of magic laid about them, bonds woven too tightly to be broken, that Lúthien there at the core of the enchantment can feel their very hearts pounding beneath her skin - from the hot-race-thrumming of the Valaraukar to the swift staccato drumbeat of the Orcs, burning through her as if her own. 

_She could make them her own._

She pauses, power crackling at her fingertips and the gleam of ageless starlight sparking violet-white across her trembling vision.

_She could make them all her own._

Possibilities abound, but the Song is not yet done.

The Music is a living, breathing thing pouring forth from within her, meeting that blighted darkness that spills from fallen Morgoth like tar, slick-black and reeking, lapping at the foot of the throne as imbued with the magic of its slumbering master it seeks the one who brought him down, reaching out curling tendrils toward the lone Lúthien where she stands. One of them will flinch. She gathers her might for the second onslaught but the dark recoils from at the Eldar-blood so clearly shining forth from her, hair like wild storms over the Sea and eyes like the light of the Trees that bloom no more in Valinor, a great and depthless shadow at her heart.

The power of the throne quails as it would from lofty Elbereth herself but something in Lúthien calls out to something in it, a twin darkness, kindred abyss like the space between galaxies, the lapping of waves in the deepest, blackest waters of the world, the endless coiling silence of the Void that took root in the world at the moment of Tinúviel's birth and even now fills Melkor's dreams.

In her, in she who tore down towers and clothed herself in the skin of beasts to find her way here now, the shadows find their likeness.

On she presses against it, drawing from those deep wells of might, and calls out _remember me?_

_Know your equal, shade._

_Know your_ better.

If it did not, it now does, as she strides forward and lays her claim upon that vacant throne.

Uncontested, it bows to her will.

She crosses to Beren where he lies and when she rouses him from the enchantment his first thought, the last thought before she'd sent him under, is for the jewel, but the second—the first he gives voice to with clarity and intent—is of Lúthien. Of her safety. He reaches for her through the gathering gloom and she smiles with teeth bared at the wonder that makes her name stumble from his mouth.

_Tinúviel—Lúthien—_

When he calls her name she tastes the earth and the wind and the rain in the twilight, and oh, if she were not of the blood of Elu Thingol it might have been enough. It makes her look back, true enough, makes her find him in the shadows with the iron crown at his feet and all of Morgoth's host lain about him, and it might have been enough to sway her from her path and still her feet before the great seat of Thangorodrim if she had not noticed with sudden fury the blood upon his gentle brow, had she not looked into his stricken eyes and seen _fear_.

_Oh._

This—fear, is new.

She should not like it, in his gaze.

But there is love there too, and a faith that shakes her to the heart, a wonderment that she likes more when she reaches out to smear her thumb in the blood above his eye.

My own, she thinks.

The Void sings.


End file.
